


The World Will Know

by Salem23



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: F/M, M/M, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-07 11:22:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16407551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salem23/pseuds/Salem23
Summary: WWI has just ended and as Jack's finally going home he realizes how much he's lost touch with his fellow Newsies. No sooner that he decides to catch up with the boys does he run into a weathered and beaten down Racetrack Higgins in need of his help and a very distraught Davey Jacobs show up on his doorstep pleading for Jack's help.





	1. Prologue

This was the end. Boys ran through camp whooping and hollering, men hardened by war reduced to this childlike state by pure joy. Jackets and hats were being tossed towards the sky, bottles being broken, canteen’s being poured out it was absolute chaos. The war was over and now the world knew. Funny how the soldiers were the last ones to find out but I didn’t have the motivation to be cynical right now, I was going home; to Katherine, to my kids, to Manhatten. My name is Jack Kelly and I was going home.


	2. A New War

Day after day began to drag on, I was home but nothing had changed really. I still felt the war in my heart, in my mind. Every pop was a gunshot and every bang a grenade, I didn’t want Katherine to know, I didn’t want her to know the war broke me. Day after day life went on but I didn’t, I was being left behind while everyone else was swept up with the current of life. I idled in the house with nothing to do, nothing to keep my mind off the terrible events that replayed over and over in my head. 

Katherine was too busy with life to notice me falling out of it and I was thankful for that but my kids, I knew they could tell. Especially Amelia, my oldest, clever as a whip like her mom but unlike her mother she was observant, she saw the dark circles under my eyes, the faraway look, the greasy unkempt quality of my hair, she knew I was still fighting a war, just not  _ the war.  _ I tried to pick myself up again, be strong for her but I caught myself falling even deeper into the seemingly endless despair. I needed purpose, something to keep me going, the fact just was that I wasn’t brave or daring or strong, I needed a reason to be those things just like everyone else and where I was once a central and needed part of my fellow Newsies lives I now barely had a reason to wake up in the morning. 

“Papa do you want more coffee?” Amelia’s sweet voice came to me snapping me out of yet another mental spiral. 

“I can make it myself darling, thank you” I stood up with a groan feeling much older than my years and kissed her on the forehead before grabbing the cups and heading into the kitchen. We had house servants but I could never bring myself to actually order them around, they were mostly there for Katherine and the kids, and so her father didn’t think I was some kind of communist. 

I begun to grind the bitter beans as I let my mind wander, a dangerous move these days. I couldn’t even paint anymore because it gave my mind too much space to just think.  I thought about the boys, I was beginning to think of them more often these days, how many of them made it out of the war? Was Davey alive? Married? Ever since marrying Katherine I drifted further and further away from them until Albert died. I felt so guilty like it was my fault, disease took him suddenly and I could never help but think with this grand life I lived I should’ve been able to do something for him, they had expected me to. He didn’t last long and once he passed I cut all ties, it was more painful to be looking in and not quite apart of them any more than to not see them at all, but nowadays I was starting to rethink that. 

I groaned rubbing my eyes, trying to rub away the pain in my head I suppose. I abandoned my endeavors with the coffee and went back to the sunroom where Amelia was waiting for me dutifully. 

“Where’s the coffee?” She asked puzzled closing her book and setting it on her lap. 

“I’m going out for a minute” I announced grabbing an umbrella from the rack. 

“I’ll accompany you” She began to get up but I stopped her with a gesture of my hand, she was so careful with me these days it felt wrong to be pampered by my child. 

“No,” I said more harshly than I had intended too, “I’ll go alone”. I offered a weak smile putting on my flat cap, it was a style choice these days rather than not being able to afford a different hat like before. It was the one item I’d retained from my time on the streets and I couldn’t help but desperately cling to those times now though nearly all evidence of it had been eradicated with time. 

I wandered the streets like a banshee awaiting the next death, although it seemed to be my own I was waiting for. Before I knew it my feet had wandered into Lower Manhattan, I was getting close to my old haunts and my heart ached. I hadn’t avoided this place for so long it was seeing the boys themselves. I thought this would be enough, I would go home and return to normal and pretend I was living, I had died in the war, but my body came back. Suddenly I needed to see them, I needed to know they were alive, I needed to know they were okay, I needed to know they weren’t like me. 

As if by sheer force of my will, my need, my prayers were answered. There across the dirty, filthy street, I saw Race, the setting sun setting his frame on fire like a great beacon of hope. 

“Race!” I shouted grabbing my flat cap and waving it violently above me. Such pain and joy surged through my being I felt the weight of the world but for once I could lift it. He looked at me, at first there was no recognition in his eyes but I did see a look that broke me, I used to have the look too, the way I used to look at all those rich arrogant men who bought the paper from me, the way I looked at Mr. Pulitzer, the way you look at men who are better than you and you resent it. 

“Jack?” The moment was over, he recognized me and he ran across the street and embraced me in his arms choking the life out of me, but I loved every second of it. He stood back and held me at arm's length looking me up and down. 

“If it’s was any of us that was gonna get outta this life it woulda been youse, Jack, youse always been the best of us” His voice was deeper than I remembered, brimming with a sorrowful nostalgia I’d never heard from him before. 

Looking at Race now I realized just how much of my life on the streets had washed away. How filled out and healthy I must look to them as my skin no longer clung to my muscle, or how my ribs were no longer visible. I felt ashamed, that I should live this life and they get left behind, doomed to the same fate as before, and even more so that it was so painstakingly obvious I was no longer one of them. But there were parts of streets that would never wash away, that would always mark me as a child of those streets. How I slept lightly, how I treated everyone as a threat until proven otherwise, how I penny pinched and wore shoes till there were holes and clothes until they were tattered, how when I was emotional my accent would slip or in the privacy of my home it was like I never lost it. How I bought newspapers from every Newsie I passed, I no longer knew any of them but that hardly mattered, I knew their lives, their stories, because it was once my own. I hadn’t seen a familiar face among the throngs of newsboys since the war, these boys were young, the new face of poverty they hadn’t fought in any war like we had but I knew they were living through one of their own, the war to just live another day. I feared I was no longer winning that war, just in a different way.

I knew what I needed now, I needed my boys, I needed to help them one last time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah Jacky's a little depressed right now but he's finding purpose again

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really have a clear goal in mind with the story, I just know I wanted to write what was happening with the boys when they were all grown so be prepared XD.


End file.
